


Post-Mortem

by x_los



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Happy Ending, M/M, Modern Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-30
Updated: 2015-08-30
Packaged: 2018-04-18 03:48:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4690928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/x_los/pseuds/x_los
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Roger Blake's father is dying, and Roger drunk-texts his ex-husband to let him know. (Mundane AU)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Post-Mortem

Tired, Blake rubbed his eyes. When he glanced up, he blinked at the man standing in front of him. Blake felt a strange, two-fold reaction on seeing him. On one hand, Avon had once been someone he saw every day, and his presence here seemed familiar and correct, expected even. On the other, he hadn’t seen his ex-husband for two years, and the other man’s sudden appearance had been heralded by no warning. Avon was a lot to deal with on a good day, and this wasn’t a good day (it was hardly even day, yet). Looking at him felt like being punched in the stomach.

“I drunk-texted you last night,” Blake concluded.

“Ah. I thought that might be it. Though you sounded remarkably sober.”

Blake drew out his iphone and went through his messages. ‘Avon’ wasn’t in his new phone’s contacts, but well and truly intoxicated, Blake had managed to remember and correctly type the other man’s private email address, and to compose a succinct, appropriate, perfectly-spelled message telling Avon that his father, David Blake, was probably going to die today of complications from heart surgery, and that since his father and Avon had always liked one another, Blake thought Avon should know. He hoped Avon was well, etcetera etcetera. Blake gave the phone a wry, not terribly happy smile.

“Thank you for coming,” Blake said.

“Even though you didn’t actually want me here,” Avon said.

Blake raised an eyebrow at him and gestured with the phone. “I think it’s fairly obvious that I did.” In vino veritas, Blake thought grimly. Well. In lots and lots of cider, anyway.

Apparently tired of standing in front of him (his jacket over his arm, some improbable flowers, obviously purchased from the hospital shop, in his hand--for the sick room or the funeral? Either, Blake supposed, or both), Avon took a seat next to him. Blake offered him his still-warm, just purchased coffee. “There’s cream,” he warned him.

Avon tutted, but took it and drank some anyway. It was seven am, and Avon had come from somewhere that wasn’t Cardiff. On a normal afternoon, Avon was a bitch about whether something had been cold-brewed or french-pressed or what have you. But he was also a computer scientist, and could suffer the produce of a university urn when there was nothing better to be had. Hospital coffee was always dire (though even in Britain, always somehow less awful than hospital tea), but then Avon’s need looked fairly dire at the moment as well, so the two were well-matched.

“You look good,” Blake offered.

“No, I don’t,” Avon corrected him, “and you look like hell.”

Actually, in his soft corduroy trousers and well-made jumper, with slightly wind-disturbed hair, Blake thought Avon did look quite good this morning. Blake also always thought Avon looked good, and that he looked all the better for Blake’s not having been able to look at him for two years. But given the dark circles under Avon’s eyes (evidence attesting to the stress of the trip here) and his general look of sallow ill-health (he looked like he'd lost weight, and he held deep, hard tension in his face), Blake could see what Avon meant.

“How’d you know where to find us?” Blake asked.

“Inference,” Avon said, narrowing his eyes and handing Blake back his coffee. Avon supposed he _could_ have deduced it. There were only so many hospitals in Wales.

“You tracked my phone.”

“Inference,” Avon smiled slightly, “and I tracked your phone, yes.” Which was better, he supposed, than Blake realizing that Avon had never actually disabled the ap that told him where his… former husband’s phone was at any given time. When he was feeling maudlin (so very, very often), he would glance at it. It was terribly reassuring. Blake was at work. Blake was at home. Blake was taking their dog-- _his_ dog, now--to the vet. Blake was at Sainsbury’s, where Avon hadn’t used to let him shop. Avon viciously clicked ‘yes’ on his next Waitrose/Ocado home delivery order and wished Blake joy of the Basics range. He had his Essentials. Or he didn’t, but so it went.

Blake was very rarely somewhere that looked like a probable date location, which both soothed and irritated Avon. Blake should be happy, terribly happy, or what the hell had been the point of all this? And he didn’t look it. Not at all. True, his father was dying (poor, lovely David), and he’d obviously been crying recently, but Blake looked like he’d been unhappy for longer than that. He’d put on weight. He had a stupid, unkempt haircut. That jumper was a terrible mistake. This had all been a terrible mistake. But Blake had wanted it, hadn’t he.

They sat for a few minutes in silence. Blake had missed the unique texture of Avon’s comfortable, companionable silence almost as much as he’d missed the sound of his voice. By unspoken consensus, they didn’t talk about Blake’s father--sleeping, in the other room. Both the last sleep he’d know, in all likelihood, and a foretaste of the long, lingering rest to come. Blake both wasn’t ready to talk about that and had exhausted the topic with his siblings, who had gone back home and to a hotel room, respectively, to catch a few hours’ rest and check on their own children and all that.

“How have you been?” Blake asked.

Avon gave him an unimpressed look.

“No, I really do want to know. I thought we might be friends again, after everything, but you told me I was quite mistaken, and so I’ve no idea. Your twitter is hardly biographical, you unfriended me in a fit of pique, and you’re not talking to Cally or Will or Jenna or anyone I know, these days. How is work, how is anything? Are you seeing anyone?”

“Why would I be seeing anyone.”

“It’s what people do,” Blake said with an exhalation like a sigh, too tired to bristle properly. “Other people. After a divorce, I mean.” He’d not wanted to be the sort of divorced couple who couldn’t even attend the same holiday party for the arguments, but Avon hadn’t even given him the option. He wanted Avon to be seeing someone. To be getting on with his life. He told himself this very firmly, because sometimes he forgot and the idea made the bottom drop out of his heart.

Blake had known he hadn’t any right to demand that Avon ever speak to him again. But when he’d tentatively suggested separation (he’d hardly even _meant_ it as a real option), he had _thought_ they’d work through their issues and come back to one another--or that at the very, unimaginable worst that they would still be in each other’s lives. Still important to one another, even if they couldn’t manage marriage. He _should_ have known that Avon would burn his bridges and throw on napalm while he was at it, that it’d be all or absolutely nothing with him.

Avon still violently, personally hated the word ‘divorce’. The idea of going on a date himself turned his stomach. It would have felt like adultery, and Avon was, above all things, faithful.

“How have _you_ been?” Avon snapped it like an insult. Is your life good and complete, now that I am not in it, he didn’t add.

“Suboptimal, as you might put it,” Blake admitted.

“Because,” Avon said, as though he hadn’t heard him, “you were supposed to be ever so much better off. I ‘made you miserable’, and I ‘hurt you for sport’, and now I can’t do that anymore.” He supposed now wasn’t the time, and what was this but proof that Blake had been right? Here he’d come to try and--be a comfort, in some capacity. And what was he doing but dredging up an argument that wasn’t even related to Blake’s current woes? Him, a comfort. Not bloody likely.

Blake winced. Trust Avon to remember the exact wording. “You made me a lot of things. Sometimes I think you made me, full-stop.” Blake leaned back and stared ahead of him, at nothing, playing with the coffee cup in his hands. “You know, I expected you to fight it--you fought me over everything. And it was hardly light bickering.” Blake missed the very arguments that had seemed, at the time, to signify their failure to make marriage work. He missed terrible, devastating rows _far_ more than he’d ever thought he could. “But you went so quiet. You just--let it happen.”

Avon hadn’t been able to fully believe it _was_ happening, at the time. That Blake would actually do it. And there again, he’d thought, well, if it’s true, if he doesn’t want me, if he’s better off without me, then--then this is what I _must_ do.

“So I knew you thought--it was the right decision, for both of us,” Blake continued, “because you didn’t say anything.”

Avon continued not to say anything.

“Why now?” Blake asked. “It’s hardly the first time I’ve reached out.”

Oh, Avon knew. He’d not responded to any of the six emails he’d received since the divorce went through, all perfectly warm and intelligent and forgiving and _Blake_ , but he’d read them, again and again. Had been unable to delete them.

“Because you needed me,” Avon said. “And I would go to Cardiff, or Mongolia, or the ninth circle of hell, if you needed me.” He’d never been good at lying to Blake, and he was tired and raw and looking at Blake made him feel as desperate as he’d known it would when he’d cut off all their mutual friends and moved cities to avoid having to do it, and so he didn’t fancy his odds at the moment.

“Avon,” Blake said as though it had been surprised out of him. It was the first time Avon had heard Blake say his name in two years, and he shut his eyes against it. “Sweetheart--”

“Don’t you _dare_ ,” Avon hissed.

“If you still love me--”

“ _If?_ ” Avon opened his eyes and looked like he might hit him.

“From the things you’d say, sometimes, I thought you might be happier--released from your promises.”

Avon now looked like _he’d_ been hit. “I never meant to give you that impression,” he said, voice uncharacteristically soft. “Not lastingly, anyway. Didn’t you know better than that.”

“Then _why_ did you let me do it?” It clicked for Blake even as he was saying the words, and he quite precisely thunked the back of his head into the wall. “Because I said you made me miserable, and you thought--oh god _dammit_ , two bloody _years_ over this?” Blake set his coffee down on the side table decidedly. “Come here.”

Avon practically bared his teeth at Blake. “If you _think_ \--”

Taking matters and Avon’s shoulders into his own hands, Blake grabbed his ex-husband and pulled him into an embrace. Blake was exhausted and had a day’s growth of stubble, and the kiss was somehow unsexual but _full_ , thorough and achingly sweet. The flowers got smashed between them.

Blake found the nearness of death rather clarifying. Two years without Avon had been a half-life. He never wanted to let him go. He pulled back, still gripping the back of Avon’s neck with his hand, breathing hard.

Avon had his head ducked down, wasn’t looking him in the eye. “Nothing’s changed. I don’t--know how to love you, the way you want.”

Blake, who’d thought himself cried out, felt hard tears prickling in his eyes again. “ _Avon_. I was wrong. I was _wrong_ , I was _stupid_. _We’ve_ changed. I meant it, when I said you made me. You made me feel, you defined me, and I didn’t understand or believe you when you tried to tell me what we were fighting about. When _weren’t_ we trying to make each other better and happier? What else _should_ people who love each other do? It’s _not_ too late. Whatever you say, I’m going to fight for you. I am _never_ going to let this happen again.”

“All right.” Avon looked strangely resigned, full of unvoiced ‘if you say so’. Blake figured that out too.

“It isn’t just emotional runoff from my dad.” Blake willed Avon to look at him properly, and Avon did. “I’m not going to wake up with a change of heart and hurt you again. I never appreciated how much you loved me. I never managed to make you understand how much I needed you. But I’m going to now. I’m not going to rest until you know it. I haven’t hallucinated how little fun it’s been these past years without you. Nothing’s _meant_ anything, and my life is _damn_ well going to mean something. You and I are going to get well and truly old and crotchety together, and when _I_ die, either you’ll be there beside me, or I’ll be catching you up.”

“Considering how crotchety we are at present--” Avon grinned at him, just a little, with a trace of hope. Blake could work with that--could stretch it like gold wire, could braid it into assurance and conviction, given work and time.

“We’ll blaze new frontiers in irascibility, yes,” Blake agreed.

“Such interesting research,” Avon teased.

“Oh, a life’s work.” He pulled Avon to him again, and Avon’s head rested against his chest, and Blake felt it like the miraculous return of a phantom limb, the answer to a hollowness he’d barely understood. “Thank you for coming.” He’d meant it the first time he’d said it, but this time every word was thick with obvious, undisguised love.

“Well. Thank you for _almost_ asking. While drunk.” For needing me, Avon didn’t say.

Avon stayed for the last of it, and the funeral. No one seemed greatly surprised to see him, or to see Blake’s arm around his shoulder in the hospital room and during the service, as though supporting Avon made him feel better. No one was at all surprised when Avon started arguing with Blake about boxing up David’s possessions (surely they could hire a removal firm, surely Blake didn’t have to put them both through the work and himself through the emotional strain of it), and the both of them had to be reminded that it wasn’t just their decision or just their task to see through.

On the train to London, Blake and Avon argued about how fast to take this. Which city they’d live in. Whether one of them should move immediately, or work through the rest of his contract and then move, or whether it might be possible to commute, and which one of them was going to do all of that. Avon was acidic in these discussions, and Blake forced himself to think about the underlying logic. Avon wasn’t really angry about his notice period. So, it was something else. Blake calmly reminded him that whatever happened, whatever they did, he was never going to leave Avon again, so all of this was just logistics. They’d work something out.

Blake watched some of the anger drain out of Avon’s face, and realized it had actually been love and fear. He realized, too, that even Avon had only known that in his bones. Had thought he meant his circular, sniping complaints. Was a bit embarrassed to realize they were so many requests for reassurance, vows disguised as insults.

“All right,” Avon said. Avon turned his face away, staring out the window. Blake watched his once and future husband's reflection in it--rippling over the Welsh countryside. Suspended momentarily on fields, houses and trees. “Let’s--talk about something else, for a while. We can finish this--”

“--later,” Blake agreed. “Best to take it in parts. So, how _have_ you been?”

Avon glanced back at him and smiled beatifically. “An absolute shambles. And you?”

“Mm, same. How do you expect you’re going to be?”

“Fishing?” The train rattled, and Avon looked back to the window. His reflection revealed a gentler expression than his banter would have led Blake to expect. Blake caught the refracted sweetness--Avon would have hesitated to look at Blake directly like that, but nonetheless, this was evidently how he felt while talking to Blake.

“Yes,” Blake said, unembarrassed. Touched.

“Good.” Avon turned towards him, favoring him with an amused look. “It makes one feel appreciated. Well then,” and a hint of that guarded tenderness snuck in around the eyes, “ever so much better. And you?”

Blake leaned in to kiss him, murmuring “oh, the same.”

**Author's Note:**

> Beta: elviaprose  
> some advice from aralias
> 
> I thought it was a little funny that probably Avon _would_ end up in the 9th circle, by Dante's rules. Elviaprose argued hard for 'maybe just the 7th!!', but I think that is taking loyalty to the character a bit too far…
> 
> (This is soooort of mundane!PGP, by the way.)
> 
> Feb 2, 2018: MAN, you can tell I hadn't been on the Cardiff to London train when I wrote this. 'Welsh countryside' indeed--I suppose that'd be the spit between there and Newport. I didn't realise how close the capital was to the border. Ah, English imperialism, putting the administrative centre somewhere quite convenient to their own capital and nowhere near the hold-out areas in the North...


End file.
